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Paradise Unified School District’s board of trustees in a unanimous 4-0 vote on Tuesday night to repair gas lines at Paradise Intermediate School.

The problem, which MBS Engineering will repair for almost $250,000, was discovered last August when a community member reported to PG&E that he smelled gas while attending a soccer game at the school and that led a PG&E to shut off all gas to the school over that weekend.

The repairs needed are not related to the Camp Fire.
Jake Timm, Director of Facilities, Maintenance, and Operations for PUSD, told the board that the issue are the same that the district had at the high school in 2017.

“(We have) 1965 construction, direct burial cast iron pipes rotting from the inside,” he said. “Here we are again, the line is beyond repair and not worth repairing, for the safety of our students, teachers, parents or the public.”

Timm noted the campuses are using by the public in varying ways.

Assistant Supt. David McCready noted that MBS, which was the company that repaired the lines at Paradise High School, was the only company to bid on the project.

Timm also told the board that while the fire didn’t make PINT gas lines worse, it did burn the lines at Paradise Elementary.

But the fact that fire did burn that school, it’s freed up capital for the PINT project..

“We’re going to have to, clearly, start from the ground up there,” he said. “Paradise Elementary was, unfortunately, one of our next major roofing projects, so this frees up that roofing budgets gas line project.”

Timm said that he expects that once the new budget year starts in July MBS will start work on the project and it shouldn’t impact school in August when they return to the Ridge.

Timm added that the high school repairs took two weeks.

“This one is going to be a little more straight forward than the high school was,” he said. “Only a little bit of trenching here.”